One who is able to withdraw his senses from sense objects, as the tortoise draws his limbs within the shell, is to be understood as truly situated in knowledge.
As the heat of a fire reduces wood to ashes, the fire of knowledge burns to ashes all karma. Nothing in this world purifies like spiritual wisdom. It is the perfection achieved in time through the path of yoga, the path which leads to the Self within.
This is true knowledge: to seek the Self as the true end of wisdom always. To seek anything else is ignorance.
Concerned alone with the upholding of the world, you should act. Whatever the best man does, others do that also. The world follows the standard he sets for himself.
There are two ways of passing from this world – one in light, and one in darkness. When one passes in light he does not come back but when one passes in darkness he returns.
That one I love who is incapable of ill will, and returns love for hatred. Living beyond the reach of I and mind, pain and pleasure, full of mercy, contented, self-controlled, with all his heart and all his mind given to Me – with such a one I am in love.
As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense - world into the sea of peace that is the sage.
Know that all creatures have evolved from this twofold energy, and Brahmn is the origin as well as dissolution of the entire universe.
